A blog mainly about Java

GeeCon is over, long live GeeCon

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been invited to GeeCon to talk about Java EE 6. This very first edition of GeeCon took place in the city of Crakowand was aimed at Eastern European Java developers. The Polish JUGwas created a few years ago as a local Java event user group. This year they decided to do a big international event, and it worked out. Even in this dark time of financial crisis, there was 350 attendees during the two days.

I have to say that I missed the first day of conference as I arrived in Cracow on Thursday afternoon. After crawling around the city, I met the organizers and some speakers at a bar in the Jewish quarter (Kazimierz), a very nice a lively area. The GeeCon guys organized a pub tour around the city. We had a voucher with four stamps and we had to go from one pub to another one to get our free beer. A very nice way to tour the city… and drink polish beer. With the Java Black Belt guys we followed a local Cracow Java passionate, from bar to bar. I had to finish the evening drinking water and went to bed earlier than the others… had to talk the day after.

Friday I arrived early at the conference center (a cinema outside the city) because my talk was at 10am. At 9:30am, Adrian Nowak (one of the organizers) asked me if I could do a second talk because one speaker didn’t turn up. Hey, last minute improvisation. I found a talk on GlassFish I gave at the Server Side Symposium last year in Prague. And here I am. 30 minutes to find the slides, remember the talk, and bang. So, from 10am to 11am I did GlassFish and then, from 11am to 12am, Java EE 6. I was impressed how many people turned up. The room was fully packed with people interested on the topic and asking questions. I think it went quite well. At the lunch break people continued asking me questions about it. Is Java EE 6 the killer specification for 2010 ;o)

In the afternoon I mainly walked around the conference center and talked to friendly people (Stephan Janssen was there). GeeCon is community oriented, so people are really relaxed, easy going… perfect place to have a chat. I attended only one talk, the SOLID design principles by Bruno Bossola. I never miss a talk of Bruno because I always learn something and don’t stop laughing for one hour. He really knows how to get the audience attention. Well done. After few coffees, more chatting to people, it was time to take a taxi and go back to the hotel. I did this with Thomas Enebo and we had a nice talk in the taxi.

Friday night I had a diner with Thomas, Bruno and co. Spent most of Saturday wondering around the city with Thomas and we met most of the organizers for a last drink in Cracow. The entire experience was fantastic : good conference, nice atmosphere, beautiful city… I’ll definitely go back to GeeCon next year.

If you missed my talk in Cracow and live somewhere north or France, Wednesday the 13th of May I’ll be talking at the Ch’ti JUG. See you there.

GeeCON 2010 is moving very fast forward.
As you know we have discovered GeeCON Planet for this year and we are now waiting for official confirmation, so maybe GeeCON Planet is going to be real.
Anyway this year we have also Mascot: Gee Champion, but we have an issue with body, because Gee Champion is coming from GeeCON Planet.